Social Security Numbers

This is an archival or historical document and may not reflect current policies or procedures.

The First Social Security Number and the Lowest Number

The first SSN issued was not the
lowest number, and the lowest number was not the first SSN.
In fact, the first number issued wasn't really the first number
issued at all.

The "First"
Social Security Number (SSN)

Issued Through Local Post Offices

Since the Social Security Board did not have a network of
field offices in late 1936, it contracted with the U.S. Postal
Service to distribute and assign the first batch of Social
Security numbers through its 45,000 local post offices around
the country. Of these 45,000 post offices, 1,074 were also
designated as "typing centers" where the cards themselves
were prepared. The procedure for issuing the first SSNs were
that the SS-4 application forms were to be distributed by
the post offices to employers beginning Monday, November 16,
1936. These forms asked the employers to indicate how many
employees they had at their place of business. Using the data
from the SS-4 forms, the post offices then supplied an SS-5
form for each employee and these forms (on which the assignment
of an SSN was based) were to be distributed by the post offices
beginning Tuesday, November 24, 1936. The completed SS-5 forms
were returned to the post office where an SSN would be assigned
and a card typed with the name and SSN. This step could happen
on one of several ways. The person could return the card in
person and wait while the "typing center" prepared
their card, or they could hand the form to their local letter
carrier, or they could put it in the mail. Once the SSN was
assigned and the card typed, the local letter carrier then
returned the card to the place of business as a piece of regular
mail. The record of the SSN assignment was sent to Social
Security headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, where the master
file of SSNs would be kept.

So the first card was issued, sometime in mid-November, 1936,
somewhere in one of 1,074 post offices to someone whose identity
and SSN are unknown. In theory, the first card should have
been issued on November 24th, but there have been reports
of cards showing earlier dates. It is not clear whether the
cards with earlier dates were actually issued on that day
or whether some post offices predated some of their cards.
If the 45,000 local post offices followed their procedures,
no cards could have been issued before November 16th, and
none should have been issued before November 24th. But here
again, there is always the possibility that some local post
offices failed to follow their instructions. The best we can
say with certainty is that the first SSN was issued sometime
in mid-November 1936. In any case, on whatever day the first
card was issued, hundreds of thousands of SSNs were probably
issued on that same day, so many people had Social Security
cards issued on the very first day they became available.

The First Official SSN

Once the SSN records were received in Baltimore they were
grouped in blocks of 1,000 and the master records were created.
On December 1, 1936 the first block of 1,000 records were
assembled and were ready to start their way through the nine-step
process that would result in the creation of a permanent master
record and the establishment of an earnings record for the
individual. When this first stack was ready, Joe Fay, head
of the Division of Accounting Operations in the Candler Building,
walked over to the stack, pulled off the top record, and declared
it to be the official first Social Security record. (This
was the first point in the process where there was enough
control to designate an official first card--it would have
been impossible to try and identify the first card typed in
one of the 1,074 typing centers around the country.) This
particular record, (055-09-0001) belonged to John D. Sweeney,
Jr., age 23, of New Rochelle, New York. The next day, newspapers
around the country announced that Sweeney had been issued
the first SSN. It would be more accurate to say that the first
Social Security record was established for John David
Sweeney, but since master records were invisible to the public
and the Social Security card was a very visible token of the
program, the newspapers overlooked the nuance.

And so John David Sweeney, Jr. is the closest thing we have
to the first person to have received a Social Security card--although
his status is more symbolic than actual.

John David Sweeney, Jr.

Mr. Sweeney was the son of a wealthy factory owner, and had
grown up in a 15-room Westchester County home staffed with
servants. In an effort to learn the family business, Mr. Sweeney
was working as a shipping clerk for his father at the time
he filled out his application for a social security card.
The Sweeneys were Republicans and the whole family voted for
Landon in 1936, although John Jr. allowed that he liked the
new Social Security program even though he didn't think much
of the New Deal. John Sweeney died of a heart attack in 1974
at the age of 61 without ever receiving any benefits from
the social security program; however, his widow was able to
receive benefits based on his work until her death in 1982.

The Lowest Number

We do know who received the Social Security card
with the lowest number, card 001-01-0001. Since the Board controlled
the issuance of the account numbers to the post offices, and
since they were to be distributed geographically by area number,
the agency was in a position to at least control where the number
was issued--and it tried to control who it was issued to.

Social Security numbers were grouped by the first three digits
of the number (called the area number) and assigned geographically
starting in the northeast and moving across the country to the
northwest. But if you look closely at the distribution pattern
you will see an apparent anomaly. The lowest area numbers are
assigned to New Hampshire, rather than to Maine, even though
Maine in the most northeasterly of the states. This was apparently
done so that SSN 001-01-0001 could be given to New Hampshire's
favorite son, Social Security Board Chairman John G. Winant
(Winant was the former three-time Governor of New Hampshire).
Chairman Winant declined to have the SSN registered to him.
Then it was offered to the Federal Bureau of Old Age Benefits'
Regional Representative of the Boston Region, John Campbell,
who likewise declined. It was finally decided not to offer this
SSN as a token of esteem but instead to issue it to the first
applicant from New Hampshire. This proved to be Grace D. Owen
of Concord, New Hampshire, who applied for her number on November
24, 1936 and was issued the first card typed in Concord, which,
because of the area number scheme, also happened to be the card
with the lowest possible number.

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